It’s been noted that at one time, virtually every household in the country had one of these inexpensive illustrations of Americana in their home. Moving centuries ahead, she mentioned the 19th-century print house of Currier & Ives. She referred to these images as early examples of “visual journalism.” These ancient markings often display the heroic glories of the hunt, and other primitive works may depict multiple profiles of the human hand or crude studies of animal life. “Images help us celebrate our cultural achievement and establish and cement our hierarchy and social norms.”ĭuring a slide lecture, a photograph of a 7,000-year-old cave painting from Spain was shown alongside Native American petroglyphs. “To me, a drawing means observing, documenting, commenting and reflecting on the world around us,” Krug said to an opening night audience on March 18. Now, a new exhibit encompassing three galleries at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum capture her illustrations as well as the paperwork, images and artifacts that brought the book to life. She is perhaps best known for her autobiographical 288-page innovative, scrapbook-style “Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home.” With her drawings juxtaposed with family photographs, as well as documents and wartime snapshots, the book defines Krug’s search to determine the involvement of her forebears during the Nazi regime. The German expatriate, a professor at New York’s Parsons School of Design, has written and created art for three books and provided drawings for as many more for other writers. Beautifully illustrated and lyrically told, Heimat is a powerful meditation on the search for cultural identity, and the meaning of history and home.Discovering the works of illustrator and author Nora Krug is an enlightening revelation. In Heimat, she documents her journey investigating the lives of her family members under the Nazi regime, visually charting her way back to a country still tainted by war. Seventeen years after leaving Germany for the US, Nora Krug decided she couldn't know who she was without confronting where she'd come from. Travelling as a teenager, her accent alone evoked raw emotions in the people she met, an anger she understood, and shared. Nora Krug grew up as a second-generation German after the end of the Second World War, struggling with a profound ambivalence towards her country's recent past. The New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2018 One of the Guardian's '50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2018' Shortlisted for the Longman History Today Prize Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing Winner of the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize Winner of the The National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography Winner of Book Illustration prize at the V&A Illustration Awards Winner of Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year

The German bestseller - a powerful and deeply affecting graphic memoir that explores identity, guilt and the meaning of home

Nora krug